Pieces: A Story Cycle
by Realmer06
Summary: In the end, they're all just parts of a whole. An exploration of the next generation.
1. Teddy Lupin (April 28, 1998)

This is a project I've wanted to do for a long time, and it's one I'm finally able to start on. This story cycle will be 17 parts long, one for each of the canon next gen characters (plus one OC I threw in there). This will be my personal canon on these characters, and there will be two ways to read the pieces. One, just the story part which might be a scene, a character study, a stream of consciousness, or what have you. But at the end of each piece, I'll include my thoughts, my process, and why I made the choices I did for each character.

This is an experiment. We're going to see how it goes.

* * *

_Teddy_

The Potter boys don't realize how lucky they have it. Their house is so _full_ – of noise, of light, of movement, of love. And they take it all for granted. But Teddy doesn't. He _can't_. Not when his own home, that he shares with Granna, is so completely different: still and silent and dimmer somehow, thought the sun shines in just the same. And there is still love at Granna's, but it doesn't _overflow_ like at Harry's. It's quieter, calmer, not as obvious. But still there.

He loves his Granna; of course he does. And he knows she loves him, too – he is all she has left in the world; she's told him that before. But he knows, too, that she is an awful lot of broken, and sometimes, he feels that the only thing keeping her pieces held together is this ten-year-old boy she'd been given to care for, back when he was a baby, back when he hadn't had anyone either, back when his godfather was all the god part and none of the father part because he was only seventeen and didn't know how to be.

Sometimes, Teddy thinks his Granna is grateful he's around, to be the reason her pieces stay together. And other times, he's convinced she hates him for it, that she wishes she could just fall apart and be done with it all, and he's the only thing standing in the way.

Those are the times he hates his mum and dad the most.

Teddy Lupin's hatred for his parents is like a hot, hard ball that always lives in the pit of his stomach, sometimes bigger and sometimes smaller, but never not there. He hasn't always hated them; when he was little and didn't know any better, he'd even loved them, thought of them as heroes, believed every good thing anyone had ever told him about Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin. But then he'd learned that his parents had _chosen_ their deaths, their deaths over his life, because his mother had only had him five days before and shouldn't have been anywhere but in bed, but she went off to fight instead of choosing to be a mother. They hadn't been ordered to the battle, they hadn't been needed, they hadn't made a difference. They'd just died. They'd died and broken Granna into all those little pieces, and they'd left him behind to be an orphan for the rest of his life.

Teddy hates hearing them called heroes, and he hates hearing them called parents, too, because they weren't. They'd given up being the second to try and be the first, but they'd gotten killed before they could do one single, heroic thing, and Teddy hates them for it. That woman named Tonks had thought so little of him that she had died rather than be his mother, so why shouldn't he think just as little of her now? Why on earth should he call her his mother, when it was so clear she hadn't wanted to be?

He doesn't tell anybody about these feelings, though. He knows it would make the pieces inside Granna crack apart a little bit more, and it would make Harry wear his sad, hurt look, and Teddy loves them both too much to tell them how much he hates Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin. So every time someone calls them 'hero' or talks about how proud he should be of his mum and dad, Teddy just takes the anger and pushes it down and adds it to the ball that's always sitting in his stomach.

The older he gets, the more he comes to realize that most boys his age don't carry about balls like that. Most boys his age aren't this angry all the time. But then, most boys his age have a real family and a mother and father they can love, not this strange, cobbled together version of a family that Teddy has.

He lives mostly with Granna, but the third week of every month and every other weekend, he spends at Harry's. He has his own bedroom, which he was allowed to decorate however he wanted, and he has his own towel and his own place at the table, and it's so close to being like his home, but it isn't. He knows it isn't. No matter how hard he and Harry and Ginny try, they aren't his parents and they never will be. They have their own sons who are there all the time, not just eleven days out of every month, and no matter how hard he wants it, Teddy just doesn't fit all the way into that house and that life. There's _too_ much noise and _too_ much movement, and it's like a whirlwind, and he can't help but get caught up in it and carried off by it, but he never can truly become part of it. He just doesn't know how, and he just doesn't fit.

And it's the same at Granna's, only opposite, because if he moves too fast or speaks too loud, he knows he's bound to break something. So he tiptoes around and lowers his voice and wishes he were at Harry's. And then he gets to Harry's and gets pushed and pulled in one direction or another and wishes he was at Granna's. And he knows it's his missing parents that make it so he can't fit anywhere, and he hates Nymphadora and Remus a little bit more.

He wants so desperately for Hogwarts to be where he can carve a Teddy Lupin shaped hole he can put himself into, his place where he can fit perfectly, but the closer he gets to going, the more sure he becomes that his parents are going to be hanging over his head his whole life.

Everyone is full of advice – to be himself, to make friends, to not be nervous about his house or his classes – and Teddy gets to the point where he thinks if he hears one more person tell him about his clumsy but fun-loving and loyal Hufflepuff mother or his courageous and quietly wise Gryffindor father, he's going to scream.

The morning he's supposed to leave for Hogwarts, his Granna has an appointment she can't get out of, so his choice is getting to the station an hour early or letting Harry take him. And he thinks about it for a long time, he really does, but something inside of him can't stand the noise and commotion and flurry of craziness that will happen if Harry takes him, with little James and Al and Lily in tow. He knows he'll never be anything but the boy Harry Potter put on the train if he lets his godfather take him, so he chooses to get there an hour early.

"Are you sure?" Granna asks the day before, and Teddy nods. He doesn't tell her it's because he wants the anonymity, because he doesn't want everyone staring at him. He lets her think it's because he wants her to be the one he says his last goodbye to, because that's part of it, too. It's just not all of it.

So he gets to the station an hour early and he says his goodbyes to Granna and he picks one of a million empty compartments (since he's the only one there) and opens up a book. He likes books and he likes reading, but he can't focus on this one. He's too busy thinking of all the ways he can reinvent himself at Hogwarts, where no one will know him and he can be whoever he wants.

He's been on the train for a half an hour when the other students start to arrive, and when a boy his age pokes his head into the compartment and introduces himself as "Jack Fawcett," Teddy is very deliberate about introducing himself as "_Ted_ Lupin," his mind already spinning a friendship and images and ideas about who this new Ted Lupin is going to be.

All of which is shot to pieces when recognition lights up in Jack Fawcett's face at Teddy's last name. "Lupin?" he says curiously. "Like, Professor Lupin? My aunt talks about your dad – says he was the best teacher she ever had at Hogwarts! And, say, isn't Harry Potter your godfather? Did he bring you today? I've seen his picture in the _Prophet_, and my parents tell stories – but I'll bet you know them all, right?"

And long before the end of this speech, Teddy's look is black and the anger is back fiercer than ever, and with a short and rude, "I'm saving this compartment for someone," he practically shuts the door on Jack Fawcett's toes.

He thinks it's his black look that keeps anyone else from sitting with him, and it partially is, but it's also that Jack Fawcett is going around telling people that Ted Lupin in the third compartment from the end is not very friendly and kind of mean, and so Teddy spends the whole ride to Hogwarts in solitude, his anger burning and bubbling and very close to boiling over.

And it does boil over when his name is called to be Sorted.

Because all of a sudden, there's whispering, and he can't hear it, and he doesn't know what they're saying, but it's enough that they're whispering because they're whispering about him. These people who don't know him. Who don't know his life and his situation and who he is or who he could be. And probably about Granna and Harry and Remus and Nymphadora, and he can't stand it, he really can't.

When the Sorting Hat is placed on his head, Teddy Lupin is so full of anger and rage that he cuts off the Hat before it can say anything, as Harry and Ginny both told him it would.

_I don't want to hear a _word_ about my mother or my father or my godfather or _anyone_, _he thinks furiously. _Sort me and me alone, you stupid Hat, because that's all that should matter, got it?_

And without a single word spoken inside Teddy Lupin's head, the Hat shouts "SLYTHERIN!" and everyone in the hall starts whispering again, but Teddy doesn't care. Teddy is past caring. Let everyone at Hogwarts think what they want. Teddy isn't here to please anyone. Teddy isn't here to make friends. He's here to get an education, and he's proud to be a Slytherin like his Granna.

And as he slides into his seat, glaring defiantly at anyone who dares to meet his gaze, he thinks that maybe, if everyone is so shocked by him, so surprised by him, then maybe for once, everyone will just leave him alone.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: First and most importantly, this is not Family Tradition's Teddy Lupin. Not even close. Basically, this Teddy Lupin is who that Teddy Lupin might have become if the events of His Parents' Son hadn't happened. This Teddy Lupin is angry, closed-off, and a Slytherin.

Basically, I wanted to explore a side of Teddy Lupin the fandom seems to ignore. I wanted to see what would happen if Teddy never grew out of his anger toward his parents, and I became very intrigued by the idea of placing him in Slytherin. So here he is. Angry and sullen and wanting nothing more than to be ignored by the world. A Teddy Lupin who hates his parents and refuses to see them as heroes, who doesn't fit in anywhere. There are stories in the works with this Teddy, fitting him into the epilogue canon, helping him deal with his anger and angst, and putting him up against the Pieces Victoire, who we'll be exploring next.

So, to be continued.


	2. Victoire Weasley (May 2, 1999)

The experiment continues. Huge thanks to Maggie.

* * *

_Victoire_

Victoire Antoinetta Weasley was perfect.

It wasn't her fault. She'd never really had a choice.

When she was nine years old, a photograph of her had appeared in _The Daily Prophet _– an innocent child in a frilly white dress, long blonde hair spilling down her back, staring up at the war memorial in the Ministry of Magic, her reflection broken apart by the names of the dead engraved into the stone. Overnight, she'd become an emblem for the Wizarding world, a responsibility that had demanded perfection, and so, perfect she had become.

There was never any pressure for perfection from her parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles. They loved her no matter what. Victoire knew that. But after that ninth birthday and that famous, iconic photograph, the pressure poured in from other sources. She was an icon. A paragon. The quintessential picture of innocence, the physical embodiment of all that had been fought for years before she was born.

"Victory's Child" was the title of that photograph.

There were days when Victoire hated that photograph.

It wasn't as if she'd consciously set out to be some picture of innocence that day. It had been her ninth birthday, she'd thrown a temper tantrum because she'd picked up on the fact that her birthday was being overshadowed by something, and when her dad had explained the war to her, she'd asked to go to the ceremony. She'd just wanted to see her uncle's name on the wall. She hadn't asked for the moment to be captured on film. She hadn't asked to be mentioned by name in her uncle Harry's speech. She hadn't asked to be singled out through her birthday and her name and her presence.

She was the oldest Weasley grandchild. Her uncle was Harry Potter. Her name meant victory, and she was born one year to the day of the end of the biggest war most of the wizarding world could remember. And all this had been highlighted by one photograph that had taken the world by storm, and now, the eyes of the world rested on her once a year, whether she wanted them to or not. Perfection was expected. Perfection had to be delivered. Perfection was, therefore, the only option available.

Perfection wasn't easy. Victoire struggled with it daily, especially when she got to Hogwarts. Because it wasn't just about being a good student and a model Gryffindor, being top of the class, on track to become Prefect and Head Girl. It was also about being friendly and likeable and social and personable.

It was lucky that Victoire was naturally outgoing, that she had an easy smile and knew how to talk to people. It was lucky that she could make friends easily, that she was genuine and sweet and likeable before she put the effort in. She was one-eighth Veela, and it wasn't enough to convince men to fall at her feet or allow her to charm crowds of people, but it was enough to help make her sunny and friendly and charismatic, even more so than she already was. She was the kind of girl one couldn't help but like.

She made school seem effortless, and she had time for everyone. By the time she was thirteen years old, the whole school knew her name, and knew that she was always willing to serve as a tutor or help with homework or offer advice or a shoulder to cry on. _Victoire Weasley will help you_, that's what everyone knew to be true.

They didn't see how much work that truly was. They didn't see how every minute of every day was assigned a purpose, be it class or homework or socializing. They didn't see how she spent the summers between years studying her dad's old textbooks, trying to get a head start on what she would be learning that year, so that she might have some chance of staying on top of it all. She signed up for all the extra classes her third year partly because twelve OWLs were expected and partly because she knew a Time Turner would make things immeasurably easier.

She broke the Time Turner rules just a little bit, not a lot, not so anyone would notice. But she'd wake up perhaps once or twice a week to the warm weight of a second person in her bed. She never saw the second person, because Victoire was always careful about Disillusioning herself before using the Time Turner to get some extra sleep, but the beds weren't large, and Victoire could always tell when she was sleeping next to her hours-older self. Waking up to that extra weight was always her cue to climb out of bed and head to the Common Room and work steadily for the next few hours on her schoolwork. Essays finished, spells mastered, whatever she'd been having difficulties figuring out managed and learned, she'd turn the clock back and recapture the lost hours of sleep.

But that was behind the scenes. That was what nobody saw. That was the side of herself that she kept carefully hidden away – the side that struggled. The side that didn't understand the material the first time around. The side that had to work to overcome failure. Because if there was one thing she couldn't let anyone see, it was her failures. What right did she have to struggle, she who everyone looked to for inspiration? How was it fair for her, the girl everyone counted on, to display her shortcomings for everyone to see? No, she wouldn't let her fellow students, her teachers, her family down. She would be what they needed her to be, whatever she had to do, hard as it might be sometimes. Her fits of temper, her frustrations, the times she wanted to rage at the world? She let those out in the solitude of the late-night Common Room, where no one could see, and by the light of the morning, she put on her best smile to greet the world as the sunny and carefree Victoire Weasley everyone knew and loved.

Perfection was lonely. Victoire hated herself the moment she thought that, and hated even more that it was true. To be lonely in a school where everyone knew her name seemed selfish. To long for someone to whom she could admit and reveal her shortcomings when she was surrounded by people who wanted to call her their friend seemed ungrateful. But the truth that she couldn't deny was that while everyone wanted to know her, no one seemed as interested in _getting_ to know her. And while everyone wanted her to be the one to fix their problems, no one seemed willing to reach out and return the favor.

A month before her fourteenth birthday, Victoire was contacted by _The Daily Prophet _and the Wizarding Wireless Network. They wanted her to attend the 15th Anniversary ceremony. They wanted her to give an interview. They wanted to recreate the photo that had been taken five years previous. With a flattered and honored smile, she graciously accepted, provided that it was all right with her parents and teachers.

And so, on May 2, 2013, Victoire sat in the Ministry's Hall of Memory, smiled and shook the hand of the _Prophet_ reporter Millie Jenkins, and answered the questions that would put her even more in the spotlight than the photograph had five years before.

"Thank you for agreeing to speak with us, Miss Weasley," Miss Jenkins said. "And, if I may, happy birthday."

"Oh, thank you," Victoire said warmly, slightly surprised by the birthday wishes.

"Because today is your fourteenth birthday, as well as being the fifteenth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts and the end of the last Great War. How has it been, Victoire, growing up with this fact? Did your birthday get overshadowed at all?"

The interview went much as Victoire had expected – they talked about that birthday and what had been going through her mind, they talked about her family and how lucky she was to have had the childhood she did, they talked about Hogwarts and how much she enjoyed her schooling. And Victoire said all the things that the quintessential image of innocence was supposed to say.

And then Miss Jenkins asked an unexpected question.

It came about in a predictable enough way, talking about the Uncle Fred Victoire had never met, and what seeing his name on the wall had meant to her.

"The wall was overwhelming to me," she said to Miss Jenkins. "And I had to focus my attention down to something small, and that something was his name. That one name on that huge wall, that was someone my family had lost. That was someone that _I_ had lost, even though I never knew him. And I remember thinking that every little girl probably had a name on that wall somewhere. Everyone I could meet had a name on that wall, had been touched and affected by these things that had happened. And while some might see that as overwhelmingly sad, I've come to see it as something uplifting, in many ways. Because it means that I have this connection to everyone I meet. We have all been affected by the events of fifteen years ago, and that is significant. This wall reminds us that we have a responsibility to keep this from happening again, whether we were there last time or not."

And then Miss Jenkins had asked The Question.

"Victoire, you say that we have a responsibility, to keep this from happening again. What do you think we can do, how can we fulfill that responsibility in our everyday lives?"

And suddenly, Victoire saw an opportunity presented to her that she had never thought about taking before. A chance to become more than just some image of innocence. To try and put voice to a thought that had been growing out of the growing frustration and loneliness of the last year of her life. To say something meaningful instead of just what everyone expected to hear.

After all, she thought in a moment of blinding clarity, the whole world was listening to her. Didn't she owe it to them to have something worthwhile to say?

"I have an answer," she said, interrupting Miss Jenkins in the middle of her condescending statement about not being afraid if she didn't have an answer to that big question. "We have to make sure that we stop judging people unfairly for things they have no say in or things that are out of their control. In the last war, it was blood status, thinking that a person could be easily defined by who their parents were and how far back they could trace their bloodline."

"Are you saying that blood status discrimination is still an issue?" Miss Jenkins asked with raised eyebrows.

"I'm saying that since the war ended, we've paid a lot of attention to making sure that it _isn't_, but there are lots of other ways to discriminate against people that _haven't_ been addressed yet, but are just as silly as thinking less of someone for being a Muggleborn."

"Such as?" Miss Jenkins asked with genuine curiosity.

"Like lycanthropy," Victoire said, knowing that this would be the moment the world sat up and took notice. This was the point of no return, and rather than turn back, Victoire took a deep breath and took a stand and said words she hoped she would be remembered for far longer than a photograph snapped of her when she was nine. That identity had been handed to her. This one, she was choosing.

"In most cases of lycanthropy, the person in question is bitten as a small child, and they have no more control over that than they do over their blood status or hair color, and yet, we treat them with fear and hostility. Lycanthropes can be considered a danger to other people a mere handful of hours out of every month, and that's only if they lack access to Wolfsbane potion or other protective and preventative measures. I know plenty of people who are more consistently dangerous than that, and yet it is the lycanthropes who are treated with suspicion and often lack basic human rights. And the stigma extends to their children as well, despite conclusive evidence that lycanthropy is not hereditary."

"And before you ask," she said as Miss Jenkins opened her mouth to break in, "no. This has nothing to do with my father. But there is something about my father I would like to say. My father was attacked by a man named Fenrir Greybeck. A five year old boy was also attacked by Fenrir Greybeck, a boy far less able to defend himself against such an attack than my father, in his twenties, and a trained curse breaker. And yet, my father was treated with reverence and respect while this five year old boy was ostracized and treated with hostility and contempt. All because Fenrir passed his lycanthropy to one of these victims and not the other. That five year old grew into a good and gentle man who was respected and loved by those who took the time to get to know him. And I know this man's son. He's a student at Hogwarts, and I've grown up with him, and he stands apart at school. He doesn't have many friends, and I think a lot of it has to do with the stigma attached to him because of who his father was, and that isn't fair."

Maybe someday, Teddy Lupin would thank her for this. But even if he never did, if she could use her position to make people think about that boy on the edges a little differently, she'd have succeeded.

"Lycanthropy is one example of a much larger issue," Victoire continued when it became clear that Miss Jenkins was speechless. "Discrimination happens along lines much less distinct and obvious than that one - poverty, ethnicity, history. Differences that are feared rather than celebrated. You asked how we can fulfill our responsibility to keep the Great War from happening again, and that's my answer. Start celebrating differences. Reach out to someone you normally wouldn't and find a connection. There will always be something. It can start as simply as a smile and a kind word, being friendly and open to everyone you meet. That's what I try to do. That's what I would encourage everyone to do."

"So, it's not just about werewolves?" Miss Jenkins asked, with what was surely supposed to be a conspiratorial smile that Victoire was meant to share. She didn't.

"Lycanthropy is a big picture issue," she said, perfectly serious. "And I'm only fourteen. Someday, I hope it can be one of the issues I help to tackle. But in the meantime, I'm going to do what I can in the halls of my school, for and hopefully with all the students who share it with me."

"Well," Miss Jenkins said after only the slightest of pauses. "Victoire Weasley. Budding activist. With an unusual but compelling call to arms. Thank you, Miss Weasley, for your insightful words and call to action. And with that, we say farewell to Victory's Child."

_Farewell to Victory's Child, indeed,_ Victoire thought, because she knew it to be true. She would no longer be remembered for a photograph.

No, she thought with a solid surety. She would be remembered for something far more important, and something of her own creation. And maybe some people would start thinking about what she'd said, truly considering the words from the mouth of their perfect golden girl. If the world was determined to see her that way, she might as well use the power to accomplish something meaningful.

On her ninth birthday, Victoire Weasley became an icon. On her fourteenth, she became a personality. And the eyes of the world rested heavily upon her as they waited to see what she would become next.

* * *

This is my Victoire from The Way It's Supposed to Be. I wrote that for a birthday challenge fest, and I chose Victoire because someone who shares a birthday with the anniversary of the end of the war was just fascinating to me.

And one visual really stuck with me from that story - the image of a little girl standing in front of a wall of names, her reflection broken up by the lettering. And I thought, what if someone had snapped a photograph of that? And what if that photo had become a famous, iconic image? How would that have informed how Victoire grew up?

Enter Perfect Victoire. A child in the spotlight in a vastly different way than Harry's kids, under a vastly different kind of pressure. A child who has to be perfect because the eyes of the world are upon her.

But more than that, I wanted to create a Victoire who stood at the completely opposite end of the spectrum from this universe's Teddy. I'm really looking forward to throwing these two together and crafting a relationship out of two such different personalities.


	3. Dominique Weasley (July 1, 2001)

Yes, these are pretty much going to get consecutively longer as we go along.

As always, I don't own anything and Maggie's awesome.

For those of you keeping track at home, Dom is two years younger than Victoire

* * *

_Dominique_

For as long as she could remember, everything about Dominique Weasley had been defined by her older sister. Whenever anyone noticed her or referred to her or described her, it was always in comparison to Victoire. She was slightly taller than Victoire. Her hair was a little bit redder than Victoire's. She looked so much like Victoire.

Even the nickname almost everyone in the world called her – Nika – was a gift from Victoire, a three-year-old's inability to pronounce Dominique. 'Nika' had become Victoire's name for her, and everyone had thought it so cute that it had stuck, even with her grandmothers, despite it being a universally acknowledged fact that grandmothers will always call you by your full name, whether you want them to or not.

And it wasn't that Dominique resented any of this, not really. It was just a truth of her life. She was second to Victoire – second in age, second in grandchild line-up, second in radiance and ability and everything else. Because Victoire was perfect, and that meant it was literally impossible for Dominique to be anything other than second-best.

Sometimes, Dominique would stand in front of her mirror and try to figure out what gene from her parents had been handed to Victoire but had totally missed her.

Victoire had their mother's long, straight white-blonde hair that betrayed absolutely nothing about her Weasley side. The only hint toward generations of redheads was a slight sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks perfectly placed to be adorable, the one tiny flaw to make her human.

Dominique, on the other hand, had hair that was not full Weasley red, but it was far more red than Victoire's, resulting in a color that really had no name, and while it was mostly straight, it had a tendency to frizz and curl in the rain, just around her ears and neck. Pulling it back in any way only made the frizzy curls more pronounced. And her skin was _covered_ in freckles, just about every inch of it, and the only positive note about that fact was that they covered the pimples that no treatment, magical or otherwise, seemed to touch.

And they'd both inherited their father's height, but Victoire wore hers gracefully, and it wasn't excessive. Whereas Dominique had started sprouting upward the moment she'd hit puberty, and had now reached a height that no nearly-14-year-old girl should have forced upon her. She was lanky and gangly, and her arms and legs were far too long to be manageable. She felt like a bumbling giant, in danger of destroying something every time she turned around.

She usually ended up turning away from the mirror in frustration before she allowed herself time to take in her stick-straight figure and knobby knees and bizarrely stubby fingers.

The truth was, Dominique felt stuck, stuck in second place, stuck in Victoire's shadow, never able to escape the comparison, never able to measure up. It didn't matter what she did or how well she did it; Victoire had done it first, and Victoire had inevitably done it better. When she got to Hogwarts, it just became more true.

And the worst of it was, she couldn't even be angry with her sister, because it wasn't as if it was Victoire's fault. She didn't ask to be born first and to be perfect. And even if she had, Victoire wasn't the kind of person you could be angry with. Dominique knew; she'd tried. But every time she wanted to get angry with Victoire – because she was prettier, because she was more socially graceful, because she cast the shadow Dominique couldn't escape from – Victoire would do something kind or considerate or thoughtful for her, and all of Dominique's anger would melt away, replaced by frustrated resignation that was directed more at herself than her sister.

There were days when Dominique felt that the only time the whole world stopped watching Victoire was when it turned its expectant attention on her, as if to ask, _And you, Nika? What do you have to show us?_

Her fourteenth birthday was one such day.

It was the middle of July, and the whole family had come to Grandma and Grandpa Weasley's, as they did every summer. As it was her birthday, she'd been given the gift of being allowed sleep in, and so she didn't head down to the kitchen for breakfast until after the post had arrived. Before she reached the landing, however, her mother's voice echoed up the stairs.

"But Victoire, this is wonderful news! Twelve Outstanding OWLs! We must tell everyone at once, they will all be so proud!"

Dominique's heart dropped down into her feet. She'd known the letter was coming, she'd known the results Victoire would get, she'd known it would come while they were all at the Burrow, and everyone would fuss and make a big deal out of it, but _why_, on _today_ of all days?

"Maman," Dominique heard Victoire interrupt, "I don't want to tell anyone. Not yet. Not today."

"But why?" Dominique's mother asked, confused by her daughter's request.

"It's Nika's birthday." She said it simply, as if that one fact explained everything, and Dominique threw her head back against the wall of the stairs in frustration. "It's not fair to overshadow that," Victoire continued. "My scores will be the same tomorrow, but Nika only turns fourteen once. Please, Maman?"

"_Godric_," Dominique muttered darkly under her breath, "Stop being perfectly understanding and empathetic, and just steal my thunder for once, would you?"

She found herself suddenly with no appetite for breakfast. Knowing she'd be discovered by someone if she didn't move soon, she slipped through the back door and out over the hill behind the house, kicking at the grass to vent her frustration.

"That does not look like the face of a particularly happy birthday girl."

Dominique looked up as she crested the hill to see her Uncle Charlie leaning on a shovel, watching her.

"Yeah, well," Dominique said darkly, crossing to the fence that separated the garden from the field beyond, "what's a birthday? It's not that important. After all, it's something you see coming from a mile away, just like Victoire's twelve outstanding OWLs."

Understanding played out over her uncle's face, and Dominique looked at the ground, a bit embarrassed by the bitterness that had escaped her.

"Okay," Uncle Charlie said, setting down the shovel with a grunt and patting the fence between them. "Sounds like someone needs to unpack a bit. What's up, Dom?"

Her uncle Charlie was the only person in the entire world who called her anything other than 'Nika,' and Dominique adored him for it. Realistically, she knew it was only because he'd been on assignment out of communication range for the 18 months after her birth and so had missed the development of the nickname, but that didn't matter. He called her Dom and nothing in 14 years had convinced him to do otherwise.

And she knew you weren't supposed to have favorite family members, but she couldn't help it. Uncle Charlie was her favorite uncle. Over the years, when everyone else was showering attention and praise on Victoire, Uncle Charlie was always at Dominique's side, giving her a compliment or a wink or a gift or something, and he always made her feel noticed. She'd asked him about it once, and he'd said that Victoire had plenty of people to pay attention to her, but that he understood the plight of the second-born, and he would always be in her camp.

As she took a seat on the fence, she remembered that conversation, and she found herself opening up. "It's my birthday," she said heavily, and Uncle Charlie filled in the blank.

"And Victoire's OWL scores came in the post this morning?" When Dominique nodded, he continued, "Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about, Dom. Your sister would never—"

"I know, that's the point!" Dominique interrupted in frustration. "The point isn't that I'm upset she's going to announce her scores and take focus away from me, the point is that she _isn't_ going to do that! She's going to keep the scores a secret so that she doesn't steal the spotlight away from her little sister's special day, because she's perfect, and that's what perfect people do! They're entirely considerate and selfless and humble and they make the rest of us look bad!"

"Sounds like someone's feeling a little inadequate," he commented, leaning on the fence beside her. Dominique huffed heavily, blowing stray tendrils of hair out of her face.

"How do you not when Victoire Weasley is your older sister?" she mumbled at her hands. "You know, being her sister just makes it worse half the time."

"How so?" Uncle Charlie asked.

"Because . . ." Dominique searched for the words. "Because everyone expects me to have some great insight into her, because I'm her sister. But I don't. She's just as much larger than life to me as she is to everybody else. I don't _know_ her, not really. And I don't understand her."

Uncle Charlie said nothing to this, just continued to lean on the fence, looking pensive.

"Did you ever have to deal with this with Dad?" Dominique asked then, and Uncle Charlie watched her closely out of the corner of his eye.

"What do you mean?"

"People tell me stories, about when he was at school. How he was top of the class, perfect student, Prefect, Head Boy. The teachers all loved him, but the students did, too, and he was basically everyone's favorite. Just like Victoire. So did you have to deal with it, with being second best?"

Uncle Charlie considered his answer carefully. "Well," he finally said, "you have to understand, Dom, that your dad and I were a lot closer in age than you and Vic."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Plenty. Your dad hadn't really become any of that by the time I started going to school. I had to deal with it a little as we got older, but I was defining myself in my own way at the same time. I never saw your dad and I as being in competition quite the way that you mean. For that, you'd be better off talking to your Uncle Percy."

Dominique gave a snort. "Yeah, Uncle Percy's not exactly the kind of person you talk to about stuff like this. He'd probably launch into an explanation of some theory of magical sibling hierarchy and forget to give me any actual advice."

Uncle Charlie hid a smile at that. "I think he'd be better at the advice than you might think. So would your Uncle Ron, for that matter."

"But I'm not talking to Uncle Percy or Uncle Ron, I'm talking to you," Dominique said impatiently. She just wanted an answer! "I want to know how I can get people to look at me and not see me as just Victoire's little sister. I'm tired of being defined by her. I want to be defined as me!"

"And what does that mean?" Uncle Charlie asked, and his words brought Dominique up short.

"What do you mean?" she asked, puzzled.

"Who is Dominique Weasley?" he clarified. "What are her strengths, her weaknesses, her passions, her interests? What makes her who she is? What's important about her?"

"I . . . don't know," Dominique said in a small voice.

"Then it seems to me that your first step needs to be taking the time to answer some of those questions. Getting to know yourself, as it were. Because if you don't, how is anyone else supposed to?"

Dominique was silent for a long time. Then, she said, "I don't know how to do that."

"Well, I can tell you that it's pretty simple, all things considered. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy," Uncle Charlie said. "You're going to have to step out of your comfort zone, try new things, new experiences. Discover what you're interested in, what you're good at, what you're lousy at, all of it. You need to figure out who Dominique Weasley really is. In fact, I'm making that your assignment."

"What?" Dominique asked, startled.

"Your assignment," Uncle Charlie repeated. "Your summer project. We'll call it 'Defining Dominique.' For the next six weeks, you need to be working on a list of statements that define you. It needs to be at least three items long, and you need to be ready to present it to me by the last week of August. That gives you a month and a half."

Dominique stared at him. "Are you serious?" she finally asked.

"Completely," he said, and she knew he meant it.

"So I just put together a list of things that make me different from Victoire?" she asked, and Uncle Charlie frowned at her.

"When, in any of that, did you hear me mention your sister?" he asked. "Even once. When?" Dominique colored.

"You didn't," she said.

"That's right," Uncle Charlie said, and then his tone got gentler. "Dom, the first person you have to convince to stop defining you through Victoire, is you. I don't want her to enter into your head at all while you're making this list. I don't give a damn one way or the other if any or all of your statements could also apply to her. She isn't important to this. This is about you, and only you. Got it?"

Still blushing Weasley red, Dominique nodded.

"Good girl," Uncle Charlie said then. "Come to me in six weeks with your list, and I'll tell you the secret."

"What secret?" Dominique asked, her curiosity piqued in spite of herself. Uncle Charlie's eyes twinkled.

"The secret of how I kept from feeling second best next to your dad," he said simply.

Over the course of the next six weeks, Dominique became a different person. She tried things she'd never done before, like making dinner with Grandma Weasley and playing chess with Uncle Ron. She spent an afternoon in Muggle London with her Aunt Audrey, and spent another tinkering with Muggle gadgets alongside Grandpa Weasley in the shed out back. She fed the chickens and collected eggs and tried her hand at knitting. She asked to shadow her dad at the bank, and then proceeded to ask to shadow every single one of her aunts and uncles to their various jobs. She went to the Ministry with Uncle Percy and the Quidditch pitch with Aunt Ginny and the joke shop with Uncle George. She offered to babysit all ten of her younger cousins (and infant brother) for a day so the adults could go out for a night on the town.

In short, she was more engaged and active in those six weeks than she had ever been in her life. At one point, her dad pulled Uncle Charlie aside and asked, "Charlie, you wouldn't happen to be behind the drastic change in my youngest daughter of late, would you?"

Uncle Charlie just smiled. "No," he said. "Adolescence and growing self-awareness are behind it. I may have catalyzed her current project to help her fit into her own skin a little easier, but what you're seeing is all her."

"And this project?" Dominique's father asked. "You want to fill me in on that?"

"Come to the pasture next Monday," was all Uncle Charlie would say. "And Dom might just do that on her own."

When her six weeks were up, Dominique went to the fence where Uncle Charlie had first given her the challenge she'd been working on for the past month and a half. But it wasn't just Uncle Charlie waiting for her – it was her father as well, and the sight of him brought her up short. She stopped suddenly, looking at him with apprehension, fingers inadvertently crumpling the paper in her hand.

"Do you mind if I sit in?" her father asked, and Dominique had to swallow a few times before she answered. She glanced at Uncle Charlie, who smiled encouragingly.

"What better way to start?" he asked softly, and Dominique took a deep breath.

"Promise you won't get mad at me?" she asked, her voice shaking the tiniest bit. Her father frowned.

"Why would you think I would get mad at you, Nika?" he asked, and whether it was her uncle's encouraging presence or the list in her hand or the fact that the last six weeks had changed something about her, Dominique did something she'd never done before – she spoke up.

"Because the first thing on my list is that I hate that name," she said, and the words came out in a rush, surprising both herself and her father. She saw his eyebrows rise, and she took a deep breath and continued. "I think my name, Dominique, is beautiful, and I hate that you gave it to me but don't use it. I know I can't just expect everyone to up and change what they call me after fourteen years, but the fact is, I really would prefer to be Dominique, or Dom. Not Nika."

The rush of courage that had allowed her to say all that spent, she looked at the grass at her feet, terrified at her daring, almost amazed at what had just come out of her mouth. Old Dominique would never have stirred the waters like that. Old Dominique wouldn't have dared.

"Dominique." The sound of her name brought her head up, nervously, but in her father's gaze there was no censure or disappointment as she had feared there might be, but only, dare she say it, pride? "I didn't know you felt that way," he said, an apology in his words. Dominique felt brave enough to smile.

"I didn't either," she admitted.

Her father nodded, once, then said, "Well, then. What else don't I know about you?"

She started off reading from her list, but the longer she spoke to them, admitting that she thought Quidditch was boring and that she loved Muggle literature, she found that she abandoned the list before long and just _spoke_ to them, told her father and her favorite uncle about who she really was, a girl who would like to spend a summer in France, a girl who wanted to learn to cook, who was good with kids, who was hopeless at chess and thought she might like to be a Muggle liaison someday.

And when she had said her fill, Uncle Charlie beamed down at her and swept her up in a one armed hug. "And now the secret?" she reminded him, and her father raised his eyebrows.

"What secret?" he asked, and Dominique felt herself blushing again.

"He promised to tell me how he avoided feeling second-best next to you," she admitted, and Uncle Charlie laughed at the look on her dad's face.

"Now, this is a secret I'd like to hear," her dad said, prompting another laugh from Uncle Charlie.

"All right," he said, ruffling Dominique's hair. "It's simple. Your dad was my best friend. Still is. That's how."

Dominique frowned. "That's it?" she said, and it was her father who answered.

"You'd be surprised how important that is," he said simply. "And now I have a secret for you, Dominique. Being perfect can get awfully lonely when you don't have a best friend. That one person who doesn't expect or need perfection from you, the person you can really be yourself around."

Dominique's frown deepened. "But who's Victoire's?" she asked, and her father shrugged, a little sadly.

"I don't know that she has one," he said, his voice soft, his gaze toward the Burrow, where Victoire was visible through a window.

It was a lot to think about, especially after all the revelations that day had already provided. But as Dominique moved back toward the house with her uncle and father, she had a great deal besides her own new identity to think about. If she really put her mind to it, she wondered, what could she really become?

"Uncle Charlie?" she said before he could enter the house. At her words, her dad smiled and left them standing alone outside the door, her uncle turned back to her. "Thank you," she said.

Uncle Charlie smiled. "I told you, kid," he said. "I'm always going to be in your camp." She gave him a quick hug before darting inside.

She'd think more about Victoire later, spend more time pondering her father's words tomorrow, or the next day, when everything had had time to settle a bit. But for now, she had to pack for Hogwarts, the start of her fourth year, and the chance for her to truly become Dominique Weasley.

* * *

Oh, Dominique. This piece goes out to anyone who has ever felt overshadowed by an older sibling.

If you're familiar with a piece I wrote last year, The Noticing of Lucy Weasley, you'll recognize some of this character. I put her into Lucy in that universe, but for Pieces, I wanted that child who didn't fit in to be Dominique. Eventually, this Dominique will become Victoire's best friend, but I wanted to look at where that started and where she'd come from, and I hit on the idea pretty early on of making Charlie her favorite uncle and confidant.

So here's the awkward adolescent trying to be noticed from within the shadow of her famous sister's brilliance, but it's an effort doomed to failure because Dominique has no idea who she is. Hence 'Defining Dominique.' This grew from there


	4. James Potter (February 23, 2004)

As always, I own nothing, and Maggie is awesome.

* * *

_James_

Saying that James Sirius Potter had a penchant for mischief was like saying that Merlin was a fairly well known wizard. When James was barely able to walk, he somehow pushed over all the bookcases in his father's study. When he was three, he set fire to the broomshed. When he was four, he magicked his little brother to their bedroom ceiling and it took his parents 45 minutes to figure out how to get him down. And that was all before he reached the age where his mischief became deliberate.

"James," he remembered his father saying in a resigned but conversational tone after he had been caught putting slugs in Lily's bed at the age of six, "do you enjoy causing mayhem?"

"I dunno," James had said. "What's 'mayhem' mean?"

"Chaos. Destruction. Trouble. Things that make your little sister shriek."

"Oh," James had said. "Then yes."

His parents had taught him to answer questions honestly, so he hadn't been able to understand why his answer had made his mother laugh and his father bury his face in his hands.

He understood later, of course, but by then, it was widely acknowledged that James was simply going to cause trouble, whether he intended to or not (he usually did). James embraced it; he'd meant what he'd said when he was six – there was something he really did enjoy about hearing the shriek that indicated a prank well-played.

He'd heard more stories over the course of his life than his parents had ever wanted him to about his namesakes and all the trouble they'd gotten up to in their lives, and James had long aspired to achieving that level of notoriety. So it may have been an understatement to say that James Sirius Potter had a penchant for mischief, but that didn't make the statement any less true.

It was through his penchant for mischief that James found out the truth about his dad.

When James was ten, he and his dad went Christmas shopping, just the two of them, and his dad made him go into an old people's shop, full of boring, breakable things, and yeah, Dad _told_ him not to touch anything, but the perfume bottles were lined up so perfectly they looked just like dominoes, and well, what would you have done?

"James!" His dad's voice was sharp and long-suffering, and James froze, his hand still raised in an incriminating posture, a line of knocked over perfume bottles leading directly from his fingers to the broken glass and sweet-smelling puddle on the shop floor. "Did I or did I not tell you not to touch anything?"

James had learned in four years when his parents were asking questions that shouldn't be answered, but even if he'd intended to respond, he wouldn't have had a chance, because the sound of breaking glass summoned the shop owner, who started berating James's father for not watching his son more carefully, for letting him wander and touch breakable objects, for being responsible for what sounded like complete destruction of half the shop — until he saw who James's father actually was.

"Oh, Mr. Potter!" he said in alarm, his tone and manner changing entirely. "I – I'm so sorry, so sorry, I didn't see it was you. Please, accept my apologies."

James frowned. Why should who his dad was have anything to do with it?

But his father spoke over the man, saying, "No, the apologies are mine. And my sons's." James felt a weight on his shoulders, firm and heavy, and he knew he was in trouble. His dad didn't do the double-shoulder-hand-rest lightly. James focuses on his shoes. "James," his dad said sharply, expectant.

"Sorry," James muttered.

"Oh, no, no, no," the shop owner said quickly, all smiles now. "It was my fault – too tempting for a young boy, too precariously placed. An accident, I'm sure."

For a moment, James actually thought he might get away with it, but his father's next words banished that thought.

"Well, I'm less sure," he said, still in that steely voice. "I know my son, so please, tell me the cost of the perfume, and the damages to the rug."

"Truly, Mr. Potter, there is no need for you to pay."

"Oh, I won't be paying," James's dad said, and James felt a new dread growing in the pit of his stomach, sparked into existence by firmer pressure from his father's hands. "I am going to be using this incident as an opportunity to teach my son a lesson in responsibility."

And now the dread was fully pronounced. And in a matter of minutes, the shop owner had named a price that seemed excessive for a little bit of smelly water and an old rug, and his father was steering James forcefully out of the shop.

"Dad, this is totally unfair!" James protested. "Either one of you could have waved your wand and fixed it in a heartbeat!"

"That isn't the point, James," his dad said in a firm voice, stopping on the walk and kneeling down so he was level with his son. "Just because we have the ability to repair items does not give us permission to destroy them in the first place. Not everything that is destroyed can be fixed with the wave of a wand, and what belongs to others deserves our respect, as surely as the people themselves do. _That_ is why you will be paying for the damages you caused."

"But I don't even _have_ four and a half Galleons!"

"I know," his dad said. "Which is why I'll be withholding your pocket money for the next nine weeks."

"C'mon, Dad! That's not fair —"

"How is it not fair?" This was not one of those rhetorical questions — it was one of the other ones, the ones that were supposed to be answered, even if James didn't really have an answer to give.

"He wasn't even gonna make us pay for it," James muttered, kicking at the sidewalk. "You talked him into it – why not take something for free if it's offered?"

"Because the money isn't the issue," his dad said firmly, "and I've had enough free handouts in my life." He stood then, brushing off the knees of his robes, and steered James with one hand on his shoulder down the street. James let himself be led along, still smarting from the punishment, but his dad's words had made him wonder.

"Why wasn't that guy gonna make you pay?" he asked.

"Maybe because he recognized that young boys can be careless and thoughtless on occasion?"

"No, because it was when he saw it was you," James stressed. "Did you know him?"

"No," his dad said shortly.

"But he knew you?" James asked. His dad sighed.

"Yes."

"How did he know you if you didn't know him?" James said, pushing for answers. "Are you, like, famous? Because," – he was gathering steam now, putting things together – "people recognize you all the time, lots of people, and I thought you just knew them all, but you don't, do you? So what—"

"James," his dad interrupted, "if you want a ride home, I suggest you stop talking, focus, and hold on tight."

"I don't think I do want a ride home," James muttered, "since you're just gonna sit me down with Mum and make me have a serious conversation."

"Hang on," his dad said, and James wrapped his arms around his father's waist, feeling the familiar tug and pull of Side-Along Apparition. They appeared in their garden, and his dad marched him straight into the kitchen.

"Hello," James's mother said when they entered. "You're home a bit early, aren't you?"

"Yes," his father said. "We are. And James has something to tell you, don't you, James?"

"Yeah," James said immediately. "Dad won't tell me why he's famous."

His mother's eyebrows shot up, even as his dad said, "Not was I was referring to, James."

In the end, just as James had feared, they sat down and had a long, serious conversation that answered his mum and dad's questions, but none of his own, and if James hadn't been a master-class sneaker, he wouldn't have found anything out.

But that night, after he and Al and Lily were all in bed and supposed to be asleep, James sneaked from his room and down the hall, to listen at the crack under his parents' bedroom door. He'd seen enough that afternoon to guess that his parents would be talking about him after they'd gone to bed, and he was right.

"Harry, you have to tell him sometime," James heard his mother say. "He's started asking questions; he's not going to accept being kept ignorant for much longer. More than that, he deserves to know, and more than _that_, he needs to know. He can't go to Hogwarts being the only person who doesn't know who Harry Potter is."

"Why not? I did," James heard his dad say, and he was pretty sure it was a joke; it sounded like what he'd heard his Aunt Hermione call 'dry humor' once.

"Harry," his mother said simply, and his dad sighed a heavy sigh that James could hear even through the closed door.

"We've got a year before he leaves for Hogwarts, Gin. I'm not going to send him out into the world not knowing, I just . . . I want him to have more time to be himself before he's thrust into a world where he will be defined by who his father is."

"And when he was too young to know to ask questions, that was reasonable, but he's started to put things together now, and you _know_ your son, Harry. He's not going to rest until he gets answers. Wouldn't you rather they came from you?"

"I'd rather have it not matter in the slightest who James's father happens to be!" James's dad muttered then, and the intensity of the words scared James a little. For the first time, he felt like maybe this wasn't a conversation he wanted to hear. Dread slowly started to replace the determination to know things that had brought him here in the first place.

"Unfortunately," his mother said softly, "we don't live in a perfect world. Isn't it better that we take the time to prepare him for the reality of being Harry Potter's son?"

That was when James left. He left because there was something ominous and terrifying in the way his mother had said 'Harry Potter's son,' and suddenly, James hadn't wanted to know why his father was famous, what he had done, what James would apparently have to live up to. He got next to no sleep that night thinking about it, and in the morning, when his father approached him over breakfast with a serious look on his face and said, "James, I've been thinking about what you wanted to know yesterday," James was so overcome with panic that he blurted out, "No, Dad, not a big deal, don't worry about it," and all but fled the table rather than hear his dad out.

James hated himself for this display of cowardice almost as soon as he'd made his retreat, and he really couldn't explain or name or understand the deep-rooted fear that had suddenly cropped up around this issue. He thought about going back to his father and apologizing and telling him that of course he wanted to talk about this, and that he would listen to whatever his dad had to say — but then he remembered his mother saying "Harry Potter's son," and the panic returned, and James knew he couldn't do it.

In the end, he found out from Molly and Fred.

James's cousins Molly and Fred were his best friends. They told each other everything, and they were both smart and observant, and if anyone knew anything and would tell him the absolute, honest truth, it was Molly and Fred.

And so, when they all gathered at the Burrow for Christmas, James's first act was to pull his cousins away somewhere private (easier said than done, but the three of them were well-versed in finding nooks and crannies) and demand, "Do you two know why my dad is famous?"

Molly and Fred looked momentarily surprised, and then exchanged _A Look_, and this was the worst kind of _Look_, because it was the Silent Communication Look. He and Molly and Fred had perfected it, and they used it all the time, but this time, it was being used _without_ him. He shoved both of them, real panic welling up in him now.

"Stop that," he said, and was slightly ashamed at how shrill his voice came out. They looked back at him, both apologetic, but Molly more so. She couldn't hold James's gaze, and she glanced back at Fred after about a second, a glance that he returned, and they were doing it _again_. "I said, _stop_!" James insisted. "What do you know?"

It was a demand, but it wasn't answered. Molly just twisted her hands in her lap and stared at them, and that was terrifying, because this was _Molly_, all confidence and sass and _not_ this kind of nervous uncertainty.

"I'm not supposed to tell you," she said in an apologetic voice, and James didn't understand.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, and Molly took a deep breath.

"My dad said your dad wanted to tell you himself, so I'm not supposed to talk about it, especially not to you."

This was mind-boggling. James couldn't get his head around it. "And you?" he asked, turning on Fred, who lifted his hands in defense.

"Hey, I hardly know anything," he said quickly. "Your dad's famous because of the war, just like your mom and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron, but he's the most famous, that's really all I know."

James knew about the war, of course. Everybody knew about the war. There were ceremonies every year that James never went to, though he knew his parents didd, and his cousin Victoire was in a photograph or something, and all the aunts and uncles and grandma and grandpa had fought in it, and Uncle George's twin brother had died in the fight. He knew that. And he felt a sense of relief, because maybe that's all this was.

"So he's a war hero?" James asked, feeling calmer now. "I mean, he's head of the Aurors, so that makes sense. If that's all it is—"

"It's not."

Molly's voice was very small, very quiet. "It's a lot more than that, James. Your dad was famous long before the war. Your dad was famous when he was a baby. They called him The Boy Who Lived because Lord Voldemort tried to kill him and couldn't. And he got other names, later. The Chosen One. The Savior."

The dread was back now, in full force. "Tell me," he said. Molly took another deep breath.

"My dad's gonna kill me," she said, sounding terrified.

"Molly," he said, as serious as he'd ever been, reaching out to take her hand, which was practically unprecedented given that she was a girl. "Please. I have to know."

So she told him. She told him everything. Everything his dad had done, been known for, all the times he'd almost died and fought dark wizards and saved the world before he was even done with school. And the more James heard, the more icy cold he got.

_Harry Potter's son_. His mother's words echoed in his head. He was Harry Potter's son. He was the son of a man who had done more of importance at 15 months old than James had accomplished in his entire ten years of existence.

_How_ on earth was James _ever_ supposed to measure up to everything his father had done? People would expect Harry Potter's son to be extraordinary. And James wasn't. He was just a kid with a penchant for mischief. He didn't know how to be the son of the Savior of the Wizarding World. And even if he did learn how to do it, he doubted very much his ability to pull it off.

The son of the man Molly was describing, or at least who James imagined the world would expect that son to be, sounded more like Al than like James, quiet, studious Al, who liked to read and learn things, who never got bored or got into trouble, who had a habit of saying things that the adults called 'deep,' who had what Grandma Weasley called 'an old soul.'

Surely that's who everyone would be expecting, someone smart and well-behaved, who understood things the first time he read them, who didn't goof off during lessons and rely on remembering what was said aloud because the printed words didn't always sit on the page like they were supposed to.

Al was who they would want, Al or someone brave, some extraordinarily talented wizard who would dazzle the teachers and students alike with his magnificent abilities, and that just wasn't James.

James wasn't anything extraordinary. He was just a kid who could fly pretty well, a trouble-maker who could make people laugh.

_But maybe_, he thought suddenly that night as he was lying in bed unable to sleep, _maybe that's the key. _He sat up in his cot, his mind working overtime. _Maybe you can be someone else. Maybe if you and Molly and Fred create some huge, impressive bit of mayhem right when you first get to Hogwarts, and make sure everyone knows it was you, something clever, not just chaotic, maybe that will work. _

He fell asleep that night, half-formed pranks flying through his head, rehearsing the best way to float the idea to get Molly and Fred on board, confident in this plan. They'd make a name for themselves, be the next Weasley twins, following in the footsteps of the Mauraders. That would be their identity. That would be _his_ identity.

Because if he could get everyone to see him as a trickster like his namesakes, just another boy with a penchant for mischief, then maybe he could escape ever having to figure out how to be Harry Potter's son.

* * *

James is a fascinating figure for me because he is so often portrayed as nothing more than a trickster like his namesakes. And I'm guilty of that too - that's how I wrote him in the Roses trilogy, which was my first exploration of this universe. And so, when I started trying to figure out his moment, I wanted to find a way to give him more depth than just the eternal trickster.

This was that solution - he's not just a trickster; he's a boy who creates an identity as just a trickster because he's terrified of failing to live up to his father's legacy. He works around that fear by removing it - he'll focus on living up to a different legacy, one more easily in his reach. Also, I think this is a James who acknowledges (to himself alone) that his little brother is far smarter than he is. My James has mild dyslexia; a good enough memory that he can compensate for it, but it still makes him feel stupid on occasion, and it's going to make him rubbish at classes like Potions, and he's not going to touch Ancient Runes with a twelve-foot pole.

He's also going to continue to struggle with his identity and being Harry Potter's son for a long time - but that's a story that will come later.


	5. Molly Weasley (July 8, 2004)

As always, I own nothing and Maggie is awesome.

And if Molly seems a bit too old for eight, excuse it away by virtue of being Percy's daughter. :)

* * *

_Molly_

As a little girl, Molly Weasley had gorgeous, long red ringlets that were the envy of every little girl her age.

When she was seven, she cut them off in a fit of spite.

When Molly's mother, shocked, asked why, her response was incensed and immediate: "Because Fred and James said they make me look like a girl!"

And from that time on, Molly's fiery red hair was kept short. At that length, it couldn't curl, though it still wanted to, and so it just stuck up every which way, an image Molly helped along. And once the curls were gone, Molly presented her parents with a list of all the other adornments she wanted removed from her life and wardrobe — ribbons, bows, lace, sparkles, frills, ruffles, dresses, and pink. In short, anything and everything that attributed 'girl' to her in any way.

Molly Weasley was the textbook definition of a tomboy. She hated tea parties, dress-up, and anything related to princesses. She much preferred to spend her time making mud pies, climbing trees, and trying to convince her aunts and uncles to let her try out their broomsticks. She refused to wear shoes from May til September, and every single item of clothing she owned had a grass stain or mud on it somewhere. This was how Molly wanted it, and her parents, though slightly bewildered by the sudden reality that they didn't have the daughter they'd thought they had, let her put away the frilly dresses and be who she wanted to be.

At the age of seven, Molly had believed that getting rid of the curls and dresses would do the trick with James and Fred, but even after her hair had been chopped off and she'd started running around in overalls, her cousins James and Fred were a constant source of frustration for the young girl, and not for the reason why they were a constant source of frustration for everyone else in the family.

Molly was four months younger than James and just one month older than Fred, so by all rights, she should have fallen right in with them. But James and Fred were adamant that they would have nothing whatsoever to do with girls in any capacity.

James and Fred were widely acknowledged to be the trouble-makers in the family (And no wonder, the adults all said amongst themselves, given their namesakes), but Molly saw them for what they were: small time. It was all throwing mud at the girls and dropping Dumgbombs and hiding worms and frogs under pillows – boy stuff, gross, dirty, and entirely lacking in finesse. They did what came into their heads as soon as it did, all noise and mess and nuisance. No subtlety. No creativity. It was almost a crime.

Molly knew that James and Fred's refusal to let her play with them because she was a girl stemmed entirely from the fact that they were boys and therefore inherently stupid, but it didn't make her feel any less lonely.

Finally, the start of the summer that she turned eight, Molly decided to take things into her own hands. Her father always said you could do anything you put your mind to with patience, determination, and a good enough reason, so Molly squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and approached James and Fred where they sat playing Exploding Snap under a sycamore tree in Grandma Weasley's backyard.

"Can I play?" she asked. The boys looked at her, then at each other, then burst out laughing.

"No," said James, turning back to the game.

"C'mon, why not?" Molly asked.

"Because we don't play with girls," Fred told her, grinning at James. Molly scowled.

"That's a stupid reason," she told them. "I can play Exploding Snap as good as either of you!"

"No, you can't," James said. "You're too busy playing with your tea set and dolls."

"Yeah, and your dress-up," Fred added, and the boys laughed again.

Molly's hands balled into fists at her side. "Just 'cause I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't play cards or fly a broomstick or pull pranks just as good —"

"Yeah, sure, Molly," James said with a grin to Fred, like they were sharing a good joke, like she'd said something funny.

"C'mon, James," Fred said, standing and gathering the cards. "Let's go."

And with a last laugh at her expense, the boys ran off. Molly watched them go, hands still balled into fists, cool hard anger settling down inside her. "Well, I guess we'll see about that," she said to their retreating backs. "Won't we, boys?"

Patience and determination and a good enough reason, that's what her dad always said you needed. She'd always had the patience and the determination, and now the boys had given her the reason.

She started small. Little things here and there, thoughtless things, careless things that everyone assigned to James and Fred automatically, and that James and Fred couldn't refute because they honestly couldn't remember if they'd done them or not. Things like leaving the back door open, tracking mud on the carpet, forgetting to latch the chicken coop.

Then she moved on to slightly more intrusive things - frogs in people's shoes, cookies snitched from the kitchen counter, common items likes keys and quills and once or twice someone's wand moved from one side of a room to the other when no one was looking - deeds that would have been attributed to a poltergeist if the Burrow had had one and if James and Fred hadn't been notorious for such antics.

She did these things carefully and methodically, paying close attention to what James and Fred were doing on their own, listening for the murmurs of the aunts and uncles growing more and more frustrated, timing her actions for when they would cause the most irritation.

And she eavesdropped on the boys, as they planned their "big" pranks of the summer, and she planned ones to match - nothing too clever, nothing too elaborate, nothing close to what she was capable of, but she had to match the boys' reputation. So she balanced buckets of water over partially opened doors and she froze spiders in ice cubes and she rigged the tops of the salt shakers to come off whenever used. The Burrow echoed with frustrated shouts of "James!" and "Fred!" and Molly smiled gleefully to herself each time she heard such a shout.

And meanwhile, James and Fred played, unknowingly, right into her hands by being their usual irritating selves and not paying attention to anything else. Because they just went about their business as usual, and had no idea that the adults thought they were being twice as troublesome as normal.

But the coup de grace came three weeks into the summer. Molly had overheard (by virtue of climbing the massive sycamore tree right outside the boys' window) that James and Fred planned to cause a huge mess in the front of the house as a diversion, then sneak their mothers' racing brooms out of the broomshed and take them for a spin around the orchard.

Now, Molly could see any number of issues with this plan, and knew that the boys would probably manage to get caught all on their own, but there was no harm in ensuring it, and there was no harm in making sure Aunt Ginny and Aunt Angelina were already hopping mad when they discovered their sons sneaking out of the broomshed, top-of-the-line racing brooms in tow.

It was easy - almost insultingly easy. She merely re-rigged their mess to go off three minutes earlier and redirected it toward the far side of the house, so that when the parents followed the trail back to the source, they would come around the back corner just in time to see the boys closing the broomshed door behind them. After that, all Molly had to do was climb to her hidden perch in the sycamore tree and watch it all unfold.

And it unfolded _beautifully_. Aunt Ginny and Aunt Angelina read the boys the riot act, citing all the mayhem that had been caused by them and by Molly over the past few weeks, and when the boys, in outraged confusion, denied those things they hadn't done, it set their mothers off all over again. Molly lay back against a branch and grinned vindictively.

The riot act ended with James and Fred's broomstick privileges being taken away for two weeks, and they also had to spend the next five days scrubbing the Burrow from top to bottom, starting with the mess they'd made of the front yard.

Immediately, though, they were sent to their room and magically warded against mischief (a handy spell Uncle George was currently in the process of refining and patenting). It didn't stop them from talking in outraged tones about the unfairness of their punishment and who could possibly be behind the things they hadn't done.

Molly knew a cue when she heard one, and when Fred said, "Things like that don't just happen, though! Somebody has to be behind it, and I think somebody's framing us!" and James said, "Okay, but who?," Molly took the opportunity to swing in through their open window.

"Hello, boys," she said with a smile. Their reactions were priceless.

"You!" Fred breathed in an accusatory manner.

"No," James said immediately, refusing to believe it.

"Who else?" Fred asked James, then turned to her and said, "Did you?"

"Who, me?" Molly replied, all innocence. "A girl?"

Fred had the decency to look a little embarrassed, but James's eyes narrowed. "What are you playing at?" he asked, and Molly continued to feign innocence.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, pretending to examine her nails for dirt with an air of utter nonchalance.

"Are you the one who's been framing us?" James demanded, and Molly just stared the two of them down.

"How?" Fred asked then, and Molly snorted.

"Please," she said with all the eight-year-old disdain she could muster. "Like it was hard."

James looked downright offended by this statement, but Fred seemed to consider Molly, _really_ consider her, for the first time. James noticed. "Fred," he hissed, "don't you dare."

"What do you want?" Fred asked her.

"I want in," Molly said simply, ready to negotiate.

"No way," James said immediately. "We'll tell. We'll tell them it was you."

"No, you won't," Molly countered. "And even if you did, who'd believe you? All the stuff you've pulled on me?"

"She's right," Fred said to James.

"Fred, don't you dare," James warned. "Stay with me! She can't keep this up all summer. She's got nothing."

"I wonder," Molly said slowly, "just how much trouble you two would have to cause before your parents took away your tickets to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of the summer." She pretended to give the matter serious thought as the color drained from the boys' faces. "This is an interesting thought experiment. I will have to consider it carefully."

"You wouldn't," Fred said. Molly fixed him with a piercing gaze.

"Wouldn't even be a challenge," she said in a pointed voice, all mercy gone.

They stared each other down for a long moment, until finally, Fred nodded. "Okay," was all he said, but Molly knew she had won.

"Fred, no!" James said in shock. "She's a girl!"

"She's not a girl, she's a criminal mastermind," Fred countered with something like fearful respect in his voice. "And I'm not losing my ticket to the Cup." They held a brief and silent conversation, then James, against his will, turned to Molly.

"You'll admit it was you, if we let you in?" he asked. Molly laughed.

"Not likely," she said without hesitation. "But in the future, you'll have me working with you instead of against you. I've done this all summer, and not only not been caught, no one even suspects me. You two might actually amount to something, with me as your friend. Take it or leave it."

James and Fred may have lacked finesse, but they weren't idiots. They knew when they were beat.

And that's how Molly Weasley joined ranks with the boys. Nothing was quite the same after that, and it took the extended Weasley family a while to understand exactly what had hit them. Percy tried to believe for a long time that Molly was just an unwitting accomplice in the boys' schemes, but in his heart, he knew what everyone else soon came to know: Molly Weasley was, in fact, a criminal mastermind.

"After all," George Weasley said to Percy, putting it best, "she's combining the boys' love of mischief with your brain for planning, Perce. I give her fifteen years to achieve world domination, and Merlin help us all when those three get to Hogwarts."

Hogwarts, like the Weasley family, wouldn't know what hit it.

* * *

I had a lot of fun writing this Molly, largely because I love giving Percy daughters so completely unlike himself, though Molly is what Percy could have become if the twins had ever been able to corrupt him. She has all her father's intelligence and cunning , and one of the first things I knew about her was that she would fall in with James and Fred, the brains behind the pranks, and Percy would try so hard to believe that she was just following the boys' lead, but he knew his daughter far too well for that to work.

I'm also very interested in who this Molly grows into, and the role she plays in this trio as all of its members grow older, but that is a question and a consideration for later, when these three get their own, longer, spin-off story.


	6. Fred Weasley (August 4, 2004)

_This monstrosity of a chapter is for Maggie, who has waited so long, so almost patiently, for me to finish Fred's story._

* * *

_Fred_

Fred figured out pretty early on that he didn't come from the most traditional of families. He could remember his parents' wedding, for one thing, and he knew for a fact most kids couldn't say that. But he could remember the day his parents got married, and not vaguely, either. He'd been five.

And it wasn't like his friend Simon, whose real parents had gotten divorced and then his mother married someone else. No, in Fred's case it was his parents, his _actual_ parents, and they'd all been a family since Fred was born. They just didn't get married until he was five.

He knew it was unusual, but he never really cared. It hadn't mattered to him. In fact, it had never even been anything he thought about until he was six and he'd overheard a conversation between his grandparents when he was staying at their house the way he did every year when March turned to April.

"Molly, you know how hard this time of year is for them," Grandda had said.

"It's hard for _all_ of us, Arthur," had been Gran's reply.

"Yes," Grandda's tone had been patient but firm, "but especially for them. We have to let them work it through in their own way and their own time."

"I just worry about them," his Gran had said, so quietly Fred almost hadn't heard it. "Sometimes I think Freddie's the only thing holding the two of them together. A blessed little accident, that child."

He hadn't known what to make of that, because how could a little kid be an accident? He _caused_ accidents, sure, plenty of them (even more when James was around). Every once in a while he _had_ accidents. But _being_ an accident? That didn't make sense.

He'd already known that in most families, the mum and dad got married before they had kids. But he hadn't realized that most families celebrated the parents' birthdays as much as the kid's. His birthday was the only one celebrated in his house. He_ thought _he knew when Mama's birthday was, and he was pretty sure Dad's was the week he always spent with Gran and Grandda Weasley, but there had never been cake or a party, and if gifts were given, he'd never been told.

He also noticed that there usually wasn't a lot of time between brothers and sisters - three or four years at most. But he was seven and a quarter when his little sister Roxanne was born, and that was older than anybody else in his family had been when they'd had little siblings. James had had_ two_ by the time they were four!

But maybe the biggest difference - and the one that came closest to making him jealous of all those other kids - was that most families didn't seem to have Angry Months.

Fred hated the spring. And he hated the end of winter, too, because December was an Angry Month, and so was April and so was May, which meant that January and February and March were Angry Months, too, months when his parents got dark and folded and there was lots of shouting and fighting on his parents' end and lots of hiding and covering his ears on Fred's. The week he spent at Gran and Grandda's was like an oasis, a chance for the fearful knot inside him to untie itself a little. But it didn't ever really go away because Fred knew that staying at the Burrow meant the worst was coming, because April was the angriest Angry Month of all.

It wasn't as bad as it sounded when he thought it like that; Fred knew that. Because not all of December was Angry, and neither was all of May, and January and February weren't nearly as bad as March and April, and the rest of the year was fine and unshadowed and almost normal.

But Fred _hated _the Angry Months, and he didn't understand why his family had them when no one else did, but he didn't know how to tell anyone about them, because what if no one else knew that Angry Months were a thing? If they were only a part of his family, how would anyone else know what he was talking about?

When he was little, he spent the Angry Months hiding from his parents, avoiding them, trying not to make them angrier. He did everything he could to put happy things in the house - pictures, notes, flowers if any were growing - and sometimes it worked. Sometimes, he caught his parents on a good day and made them smile and the Angry Months almost weren't for a moment.

But sometimes, lots of times, there wasn't anything he could do about the yelling. And on those days, he hid under his bed, his hands pressed against his ears and his eyes squeezed shut, and he waited for it to end, worrying all the time that if he was the accident that had made them a family, maybe he was the only reason they still were. Maybe if he hadn't been there, his parents would have gone away from each other and maybe found a way to be not so angry. Maybe, he thought when the yelling was loudest and his thoughts were the darkest, maybe his parents knew that too, and that's why they were so angry - because they knew they wouldn't be if he wasn't there making them be a family.

He was eight when the Angry Months started to infect him, too, when he first felt a spark of his own anger rather than just worry and anxiety and fear. He had started trying to make a list of the things his parents argued about during the Angry Months, because he thought that maybe he could make some of them go away. So he started washing the dishes and cleaning his room and dusting the furniture (as well as an eight-year-old could) and giving his dad fifteen minute reminders before dinner so he could wrap up what he was doing in the shop. He did it all, preventing messes instead of making them for the first time in his life, and it hadn't made any difference. If the dishes were clean, his parents argued about the undone laundry. If his father made it up to dinner on time, his mother shouted at him for coming home smelling like sulfur or soot or gunpowder, and it was all so _stupid_!

_It's like they're_ looking _for things to fight about_, he thought angrily one night as he listened to his parents shouting over why Roxie hadn't been fed on time, and with that thought came Fred's first spark of anger - anger at his parents, anger at their fighting, anger at the fact that their yelling was now making Roxie feel as scared and upset as he used to.

_It's not_ fair_! _he shouted inside his head, and he resolved to do something about it, once and for all.

He'd only wanted to get their attention. He hadn't meant to send a curio cabinet in their living room crashing to the floor. But he had. And the silence in the room after the crash had been deafening – for a moment. Then his parents had started yelling at him.

_How_ could he be so careless, _what_ was he thinking, was he _trying_ to get himself grounded, they let him get away with quite a lot but senseless destruction was not acceptable, it went on and on, and Fred just stood there, speechless because it was not how he'd envisioned the moment going.

And at first he thought to be even angrier, because it had been an _accident_, and couldn't they tell accidents from the things he did on purpose? But then, he realized something, something incredibly important.

They weren't yelling at each other.

They were still yelling, they were still angry, but at him, and more than that, they were yelling _together_ at him, and they weren't yelling at each other. So he set his jaw stubbornly and acted like he'd meant to do it and let them yell themselves hoarse and send him to his room.

Door slammed shut, he held his breath and waiting for the fighting to resume — but it didn't. Silence fell over the house, and he released that breath into the silence, exhausted from the tension, a plan already half-formed in his head. He couldn't say he liked the plan very much. He couldn't say it wasn't, on some level, a really dumb idea. But if it worked, if it would keep his parents from spending so much of their time yelling at each other, then it would be worth it. He had to believe that. Because it was all he had.

The plan became his Secret Weapon. He pulled it out whenever the shouting became too much. Whenever he felt so tense he thought his arms might shatter. Whenever he saw Roxie take to hiding under her bed. Whenever his own anger started to boil over inside of him. Then he'd unleash the Secret Weapon, destroy something, cause some massive piece of trouble, push just the right button to set his parents off on him.

He _hated_ being yelled at and punished and having to keep quit when his parent demanded to know _why_ he was acting like this, but he grit his teeth together and repeated over and over and over, _It's better this way. It's better this way. It's better this way._

He made it two Angry Month cycles without being found out. It had been in his favor that the Angry Months usually ended before summer got started full swing, so the punishments he had to endure very rarely affected his time with James and Molly. It had been in his favor that the Angry Months ended before he and Molly and James could make their own mischief.

He and Molly and James had big plans for the summer Fred would turn ten. They'd all be in double digits, and that meant they'd be big kids, finally. They had every minute of every day from May til August planned out, and the start of the summer was a huge camp-out they'd finally managed to convince their parents to let them do alone (or mostly alone. They wouldn't be going too far from the Burrow, and they'd still be within range of supervision, but those were just details).

Fred knew how important the camp-out was to James and Molly; heck, it was important to him, too, and he'd promised himself that he'd be on his best behavior in May, no matter how bad things got at home, because he knew it would be the first thing his Mum and Dad took away.

But it had been _bad_. One of the worst arguments he could ever remember his parents getting into. He'd tried everything he could think of to drown it out, but nothing worked, and Roxie had been _crying_, she was so scared, and she was _two_, and she shouldn't have to deal with that, and what could he say to make it better? She could barely string a sentence together, but she begged him to make it stop. What was he supposed to do?

He flooded his dad's workshop. He stuffed the sink full of play-doh and turned the taps on full force and watched as the water gushed over the edge, spilling onto the floor. And then he pushed half-finished projects into the mess, scattered notes and journals into the water, destroying them, crying tears he couldn't help because he knew he was kissing his perfect summer goodbye.

He'd never been yelled at the way he was yelled at that night. It wasn't just the camp-out they took away; it was everything. He was under lock and key from that moment until the end of the summer, and the worst part of the punishment was when they made him tell James and Molly why he wouldn't be joining them. James looked hurt and confused and Molly looked murderous, and Fred hated the Angry Months more in that moment than he ever had before.

Fred was put into a room by himself after that, but there was only so much that could be done to keep Molly Weasley out of a place she wanted to get to, so it wasn't long before she and James were climbing in through the window and she was demanding, "I don't buy it, Fred, I don't buy any of that crap you just told us. You _know_ how important this summer was, you wouldn't just throw that away, so what's really going on?"

"Nothing," he said sullenly, trying to sink into the bed, away from her gaze, wishing they'd both just leave him alone to be miserable by himself. He did manage to turn away from her, but she put a forceful arm on his shoulder and turned him right back. Glaring at her, he sat up, massaging the spot where her arm and clenched. "What do you want from me?" he asked angrily.

"The truth!" Molly demanded, just as angry. "We're your friends, aren't we? Best friends? That means no secrets!"

"Moll, calm down," James said, stepping between the two of them. "Yelling isn't gonna help, okay?"

For some reason, James's words hurt worst of all. Fred could feel tears stinging his eyes again, and he _hated_ it, because it was _embarrassing_. He was almost ten years old, for Merlin's sake!

"Fred?" James said then, and if he saw the tears (and Fred knew he did), he didn't act like he did, for which Fred was eternally grateful. "You can tell us. I know you, I know how excited you were for this summer. You wouldn't just forget about it. I heard your dad talking about what you did. It was too deliberate. You had a reason. I know you did."

"You don't understand!" Fred said, almost panicking. "I had to, James. I _had_ to!"

"Had to what?"

Fred looked back and forth between the two of them, and he felt sick to his stomach with everything churning around inside him. And he didn't think he could keep this secret to himself anymore, but he _couldn't_ let his parents find out. He just couldn't. So he said, "You have to promise not to tell. I mean it. Not _anyone_." James promised immediately, but Molly hesitated. Fred fixed her with a steely gaze. "Promise, or I'm not saying _anything_," he hissed through clenched teeth.

"Fine," she said, but she didn't look happy about it. "I promise."

"Not your parents or your sister or my parents or _anyone_," Fred stressed.

"I promise!" she said, impatient. "Now will you tell us what it is you_ had _to do?"

She made it sound so simple, but it wasn't. It wasn't simple at all. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

"My parents argue," he said, and Molly interrupted him.

"Yeah, so do mine."

"No, they don't," he said with a shake of her head, trying to make her understand. "Not like mine. Mine fight _all the time_. They're always yelling, and the only way to make them stop is to make them mad at me."

He once he'd told them that, the rest of it followed, all of it, just spilling out of him in a tirade he hadn't known was waiting to be unleashed. Nobody said anything when he was finished. None of them had anything to say. The whole situation was so beyond what ten-year-olds should have to deal with, and part of Fred knew that, but it was one of those things he just couldn't think about.

"You'd better go," Fred said finally. "You're not supposed to be in here. Go, and get ready for the camp out." They both started talking at that, tried to say that there was no way they were doing it without him, but he cut them off. "No," he said in a hard voice. "Go. Don't give up our perfect summer for me. You guys have fun. Promise."

Miserably, they did, and Fred watched them climb out the window, back toward wherever they were supposed to be. He could feel the anger and unfairness boiling up in him again, but he was scared to let it out because he honestly didn't know if he would end up throwing something or crying, and he was not about to start crying again.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the doorframe, and opened the door to see both his parents standing in the hall. Sullenly, he crossed his arms. "What?" he asked shortly.

"Fred," his mother said. "We need to talk."

"About what?" Fred demanded. "We already talked about the workshop, and I haven't done anything since then!"

"Fred, please don't yell at your mother," his dad said quietly, and Fred had to forcefully bite back his angry _Why not? You do. _"We need to talk about something more important than the workshop."

_Here it comes,_ Fred thought dully and sullenly._ 'Your behavior is unacceptable.' 'We deserve your respect.' Another lecture that I'm just gonna have to nod and smile through because they don't get it and they never will._

"Fred," his mother said gently, and Fred braced himself. "Have you been acting out to get your father and I to stop fighting?"

The words were so unexpected that he stepped back with the blow of them, full of shock and anger and pain that he couldn't even think about masking. "Molly _told _you?" he forced out, his whole body stinging from the betrayal. She'd _promised_ -

"Relax, Fred," his dad said, cutting through the fog. "Your cousin didn't give you up. Your Uncle Percy overheard your conversation. He told us. Molly still has your back."

The flash of fury he'd felt toward Molly drained away, but he couldn't relax as his dad had told him to do; the one thing he'd wanted his parents to never find out had still be revealed to them, and now he was gonna have to have the conversation he would give anything to avoid.

He stared at his hands, refusing to look at them, refusing to speak to them. If they wanted to do this, they were going to have to talk first.

"Fred," his dad said, and it was clear from just that one word that his dad didn't have any better idea what to say than James or Molly had, and that should have made him feel better, but it didn't. "Fred," his dad tried again, and then it was like some barrier of forced calm broke down, because the next words were heated and came out in a rush: "How do you not _tell_ us this?"

"George," Fred's mum said, in her warning voice.

"No, Ang," he said. "How do you not _talk_ to us about this, Fred? How do you not tell us that you feel this way?"

"_Because I shouldn't have to!_"

The words explode out of him, and in the end, that's what sends him over the edge. In all the years he'd put up with the fighting, the screaming, the yelling, both in the background and directed at him, the one thing he'd never dared do was yell back. That was no longer true. A floodgate of his own had opened, and there was no closing it now.

"I shouldn't have to _tell_ you! I shouldn't have to let you know that when you fight and yell and scream _all_ the time, that I _hate_ it! I shouldn't have to tell you that living in a house where you are _so _angry _so_ much of the time is _awful_, and that I feel like I can't move or breathe for five months out of every year! You should know all that, you should be able to figure that out, shouldn't that be common sense? Why is it my job to tell you that I don't want to hear my parents yelling at each other all the time? Why is that up to me? _You're_ the parents! _You're_ the adults! I'm _nine_ years old, and it's been this way as long as I can remember, and I _hate _it! I hate it, and I don't understand _why_, if you're _so angry_ with each other, why you don't just —"

The thought was there, but he couldn't finish it, couldn't say it out loud, both because that would make it too real and because he was too worked up to say anymore. He was breathing hard and his throat was raw from the screaming and his eyes burned, and he just couldn't anymore. He stood there in his room, with his eyes screwed shut and his breath coming in shuddering gasps and his frozen parents staring at him and not making a move and not saying anything.

"Well, fuck," his dad finally said into the silence, and Fred's eyes flew open at that, because cursing was Not Allowed in their house, certainly not _that_ word, no matter how angry his parents got, and Fred's eyes went to his mother, waiting for her to scold his dad, to reprimand him, but she was just standing there looking at him with tears in her eyes, sadder than he'd ever seen her.

"No," she said softly, in response to the question he hadn't asked. "That about covers it, I think." And that was Fred's first real indication that something Serious had just happened.

He watched his dad turn to his mum then, and right in front of him, they had a Silent Conversation, which floored Fred because he hadn't known his parents could do that. And when they had finished, his mother sat on the edge of the bed and his dad pulled the desk chair around and sat in it backwards, and Fred awkwardly sat at the head of the bed, trying to get his bearings. He had no idea what to expect.

"Fred," his dad said in a quiet and strange voice. "Fred, it's time we told you something important, something we probably should have told you before now."

The words made Fred go cold all over. Sure, he'd thought them, alone in his room some nights, wondering why his parent didn't just split up, wondering if maybe that wouldn't make them happier, but he didn't want them to actually _do_ it, not really, not for real. They were his _parents_. How could they keep being that if they —

"You aren't, you aren't really, are you?" he managed to make himself ask, and his dad looked confused, _confused_, of all emotions, like he didn't know what Fred was talking about, like he hadn't just brought it up himself —

And then Fred heard his mum make a little sound of recognition, and then she was beside him on the bed, her arm rubbing circles on his back as she said, "Oh, Fred, baby, no. No, it's not that. Your dad and I are not getting a divorce."

His dad made the connection, then, between what he'd said and what Fred had thought, and he let out a stream of cursing that started with "Bloody hell" and ended with "goddamn," all of which led Fred's mother to say, with gentle reproof, "George. Can we not?"

The world righted itself after that, and Fred felt a little more like there was solid ground under him, and he was able to gulp in a deep breath or two and get himself back under control as his dad stopped cursing and did the same.

"Fred," his dad said again, and now his tone was different, more straightforward, and the words he said were the same. "What you already know, and I know you do, is that your mum and I never planned to be parents. You came along and pushed us into parenthood. And it doesn't mean we love you any less, and it doesn't mean you aren't the best thing that could have happened to us, but becoming parents was not something we decided to do when we felt ready. It was something that happened and we had to scramble to get ready. And I'm not sure we ever really made it. The truth, Freddie, that you need to know is that kids think, and parents want kids to think, that their parents have everything figured out, that they know all the answers, that they're in control. And I don't know, maybe other parents are, but your mum and I aren't. We're making this up as we go along. Fred, the truth is, you don't have the best parents in the world. You probably deserve better than us. But the universe took two broken people and asked them to raise a child. And we do the best we can, but I know we fall short."

Fred looked to his mother then, to see if she would argue or refute anything his dad had said. He didn't know what to think, not yet, and he wanted to see what his mum had to add.

"Your dad's right," his mum said. "And he puts it . . . very well. But Freddie, never doubt, not for one minute, that you _are_ the best thing that ever happened to us. Without you, we wouldn't be sitting here, we wouldn't be a family. You are what cemented us into place way back at the start. You helped us rebuild something that I thought was broken between your dad and I forever. You gave us that, Fred, just by being born. You made us a family. But we are still a family not just because we love you, and Roxie, but because your dad and I love each other, and we want to be a family."

His parents were being so honest with him that Fred felt comfortable saying, "It doesn't feel like it." He felt both his parents sigh and glance away at that, almost guilty.

"No," his dad said after a beat. "I don't imagine it does, sometimes."

They talked for a long time that afternoon, about an awful lot of things, and what Fred was struck by was that his parents had never spoken to him to straightforward before. They weren't treating him like a kid, not once. Part of his head wondered if maybe he shouldn't feel like it was wrong, almost, for his parents to talk to him like he was their equal, telling him things that parents usually didn't tell their kids, but the truth was, he liked the honesty. Because it felt like, for once, they were talking about the things that mattered.

They talked about the uncle Fred had been named for, and how broken and hurting his mum and dad had been when he'd died, and how broken and hurting they still were. They talked about the angry months, and how, when they yelled about dishes and laundry and dinnertime, they weren't really yelling about those things. They talked about how his mum and dad felt that they had to yell about things that could be fixed because if they started yelling about the things that were _really_ wrong, the things that _couldn't_ be fixed, it would all be too much.

They talked a _lot_ that afternoon, about things that they never had before, and Fred got to say the things to his parents that he'd been too afraid to say before, and at the end of the afternoon, Fred knew something _Huge_ had just happened to him, but he couldn't really think about it, not yet.

"We're going to do our best to do better," his mum promised when it seemed like everything had been said. "But it isn't going to happen all at once, Freddie. You're gonna have to be patient with us, and you're gonna have to start speaking up. We will do better by you and Roxie, but if we start slipping, you have to tell us."

"But what if you won't listen?" Fred asked then. "What if I try, and you don't hear me?"

"Then . . ." his dad said, thinking. "We need a word. Something you can say into a fight that means we have to stop and listen."

"Like . . . pause?" Fred suggested. "When we watch Muggle films on Aunt Audrey's VCR and James or Molly or I want to say something, we hit the pause button." Aunt Audrey's Muggle contraptions had long been a source of fascination for all the cousins.

Fred's dad grinned and nodded. "Okay. Yeah. Pause. You say pause, we have to stop and listen to what you have to say. Deal?"

Fred nodded. "Deal," he said, and the three of them shook on it.

"Now you better go," his mum said, and Fred looked at her, confused.

"Go where?" he asked, and she shared a smile with his dad.

"Why, to your camp out, of course," his dad said, ruffling Fred's hair. "James and Molly are waiting."

Fred's face lit up. "You mean it?" he asked, looking back and forth between the pair of them. They shared a long look.

"We mean it," his mum said. "Go on."

Fred hugged both of them once, hard and tight, then ran out the door and bounded down the stairs. He didn't know if he was ready to tell James and Molly everything that had just happened, but he knew some of it would have to come out.

The Angry Months got better after that. When the next Christmas rolled around, Fred watched anxiously, waiting to see what would happen, whether or not his parents would keep their promise, or if they would slip back into the old angry ways. And he could tell they were trying, and they lasted a lot longer. And the first time they started to yell, even just a little bit, Fred was there in the doorway, saying "Pause!" as loud as he could, and he watched his parents freeze and take deep breaths and calm down. And he felt the anxious knot that had been part of him so long start to loosen and fall away.

His family would always be unorthodox. And the Angry Months would never fully go away. But they did begin to get better, and that, Fred knew, was a lot.

* * *

I have written in the past about the brokenness that is George and Angelina. The story is called A Hole in the World; you may remember it - it was an angst-fest. Basically, that story was written (for Maggie), and it was about just how messed up the relationship between George and Angelina would always be on some level. And I wanted to explore what it would be like being a kid growing up in the midst of that brokenness, with these two people for parents who are trying so hard but are so very broken and so very in pain.

This is that Fred. I wanted, like James, to get him away from the pure troublemaker that he seems to be portrayed as so often. Here, yes, he gets into trouble and he causes mischief, but there's more than that. My Fred is a very mature kid, all things considered, and a fantastic big brother to Roxie (which we will see more of in her chapter), but no kid can be that mature and deal with things on that level all the time, so the mischief breaks out.

I have a lot to say about this kid, hence the much longer than usual chapter. Kudos to you for getting through it.


	7. Scorpius Malfoy (April 21, 2005)

_I own nothing._

* * *

_Scorpius_

It never struck Scorpius Malfoy as odd that he didn't know exactly what his father did for a living. On the very rare occasion that anyone asked, he simply said what he had grown up hearing - that his father was a Ministry Consultant, and if he didn't know precisely what that meant, well, neither did anyone else. The title was vague enough to be all-encompassing but important-sounding enough that no one felt comfortable asking more questions. Which was exactly why it had been chosen.

There was also the added benefit that the title could describe what the Malfoy family had been doing for generations - donating enough money to the Ministry to be able to whisper in the ears of higher ups on issues near and dear to the Malfoy name and fortune - so most people just sneered with some contempt at the idea that Draco Malfoy was still trying to keep his fingers in the pie, and looked no further. Which was, again, by design.

Scorpius Malfoy didn't know any of this.

To Scorpius, Draco Malfoy was only ever his father - distant and aloof, but since Scorpius wasn't around other children enough to have a basis for comparison, he barely gave a second thought as to what his father was or wasn't. The frequency with which his father was gone didn't help matters.

For as long as Scorpius could remember, his father was gone for five to seven days of every month, away on "business trips," his mother always said. She also told him that before he was born, his father's trips had lasted much longer. Sometimes, she had told him, his father had been gone for months at a time.

"Did you miss him?" young Scorpius had asked.

"Very much," his mother had said. "I always miss him when he's gone. Do you?"

"Yes," young Scorpius had replied, but more because he knew it was the expected answer than because it was necessarily true. He supposed he missed his father. He'd never really thought about it. Life in his home was much the same for Scorpius whether his father was there or not. Draco Malfoy was a distant father, but not a particularly stern or strict one. He did not insist on absolute quiet in the house, nor did he expect Scorpius to behave like a miniature adult. He encouraged Scorpius to run and play and laugh and sing (as much as Scorpius was inclined to those things). He accepted hugs or tokens of affection when offered. He would smile indulgently when Scorpius had a story to tell him. He rarely instigated the affection, and he never joined in anything that could be considered play, but he never wished for his son to eschew such things. And he never pushed Scorpius away, though he did tend to hold him at arms' length, the result being that when Draco Malfoy was present, Scorpius fit him into his day to day life without thinking about it, and when he wasn't, Scorpius's world shrank once more to him and his mother.

Scorpius's mother was a social activist. She had a weekly column in the Daily Prophet that allowed her to work mostly from home, and Scorpius adored her. She laughed and played and was silly right along with him, and every once in a very rare while, she could convince his father to come out in the garden and sit on the grass with them and perhaps make a few colored bubbles with his wand for Scorpius to play with, or conjure a Patronus for Scorpius to chase. Those moments were rare, and though Scorpius didn't, as a child, understand exactly what they meant, he knew they were important, and he treasured them.

When Scorpius sat quietly and concentrated very hard, he was almost certain he could remember being tossed up in the air by his father, who was smiling and laughing and swinging him around the summer garden, and he also thought he could remember riding his father like a pony, but the older Scorpius got, the less those memories meshed with the father he knew, and the more likely he thought it that they were just things he'd dreamed.

Scorpius led a very solitary childhood. There was Mum, who was always there, and Hilde, their housekeeper, who spoiled Scorpius rotten but still lectured him time and again on how to be a polite, lovely boy. And there was Father. Every once in a while, there was Aunt Daphne and Uncle Theo, whom Scorpius liked well enough, and their daughter, his cousin Enid, but she was several years younger than Scorpius and therefore not much of a companion. There were also grandparents, but Scorpius always felt stiff and uncomfortable around both sets, and he and Mum and Father didn't visit either household very often. Grandmother Narcissa was better than the others, but Grandfather Lucius and Grandmother Helena were both quite unpleasant, and Scorpius always felt like they were finding fault with him.

There were very few other children. By the time Scorpius was old enough to understand that this was unusual, he knew enough to know that things were that way because of his father and his name, though he didn't understand why or how.

He remembered being six years old and in London with his Mum. It was near Christmas, and she was frantic and flustered because she had a charity event that night to prepare and she was supposed to have left Scorpius at home, but Hilde was sick and his father had been called away suddenly and Aunt Daphne had just had Enid, so he'd had to tag along with her on her errands. And in one of the shops, Mum was picking up something expensive, and the shopkeeper had asked her to go into the back room where it was being stored, and there had been no kids allowed.

"Scorpius," Mum had said, kneeling down to his level, "I need you to stay right here, for just two minutes, okay? Don't move, don't touch anything, don't talk to anyone, understand?"

And Scorpius had nodded and said, "Yes, Mum," and she'd drawn a shining circle around him with her wand and looked very nervous as she'd gone to the next room, though Scorpius hadn't understood why.

But not long after his mother had disappeared from sight, a lady he didn't know had come up beside him with a sneer on her face. Not able to cross the line his mother had drawn, she had just looked down at him and asked, "Are you proud of your father, little boy?" And Scorpius had stared up at her, not answering because his mother had told him not to talk to anyone, and because he wasn't sure the woman was talking to him at all, as her question hadn't made any sense. "Did you hear me?" she'd said, and she'd sounded so angry. "Are you proud to have such a sniveling coward for a father?"

"D'you know my father?" Scorpius had asked, because if she knew his father, maybe it was all right to talk to her, and if she didn't, then he could politely inform her that she probably had him mixed up with someone else.

"The whole world knows your father, or hasn't he had the guts to tell you? You're the child of a coward, a coward and a traitor, and if your family had any decency—"

And then a large, solid shape had swept between them, and Scorpius's mother had been there, her jaw high and set in a hard line, and Scorpius had hardly recognized her, this woman whose eyes were blazing instead of twinkling. She'd scared him a bit, much more than the loud, rude woman had.

"I will thank you not to speak so to my son," his mother had said in a hard voice.

"You think you're so fine, so high and mighty," the woman had sneered at Scorpius's mother. "But the whole world knows the truth of you, and you won't ever escape it, not as long as you live."

"And shall we open the book of your life and find the missteps you have made?" his mother had challenged. "Shall we write them down on weights and hang them about your neck to be borne the rest of your days? Shall we see if you are equal to it when heaviness of your misdeeds is draped upon your shoulders?"

"I hope you're enjoying the lonely life you've chosen for yourself, Astoria Greengrass," the woman had spat, but Scorpius's mother had been unfazed.

"My name," she had said in a clear voice, "is Astoria Malfoy, and it is a name that I bear proudly. And yes, thank you, I am happy in the life I chose. Would that you could say the same. But judging from your need to attack _children_ with your foul words, it is clear that you cannot. And I have no further time to waste on ignorant people. Come along, Scorpius."

And she had taken his hand and led him gently from the shop while the woman had shouted more nasty things after them.

Scorpius had had a lot of questions at the end of that day, and Astoria had let him ask them, and she had answered them, explaining the situation as well as it could be explained to a six-year-old. It wasn't until some years later that Scorpius really understood what she had said that night, but he understood from that day on that there would always be people who looked at him differently because of who his father was and the mysterious bad things he had done so many years ago.

And that was why, Scorpius figured out, there were no other children. None but Honoria.

Scorpius had known Honoria Ridgeton pretty much his whole life. She was just a few months younger than he was, and someday, he was going to marry her.

This wasn't puppy love or any sort of little-boy-certainty declaration; it wasn't even something that Scorpius had decided. Their marriage had been arranged for them by their parents when they were two years old.

That he would probably marry Honoria was something that Scorpius _knew_, but it wasn't something he thought a lot about, at least, not until he was almost eleven. Because when he turned eleven, there was going to be a ceremony where he and Honoria swore to each other that they would one day maybe get married. The whole thing was strange to him because his parents had been careful to tell him that he didn't _have_ to marry Honoria, they would make that choice when they were older, but that this was just a ceremony. And yet, for all that they told him that, the ceremony seemed a lot more important to his parents than they made out.

He knew that because seven weeks before his eleventh birthday, he overheard a late night conversation between his parents. He was getting a drink of water from the bathroom, and they were in the sitting room below, and their voices carried, and he heard his name, and then he did what any good ten-year-old would. He positioned himself against the stairway wall and crept halfway down the steps so he could listen better.

"I thought he promised you no more big trips, not until May. Not until after Scorpius's birthday," his mother said in a tight, hushed voice.

"You know as well as I do that those promises are never firm, Astoria," his father said quietly. "Much as the world might think otherwise, there are some things Harry Potter cannot control, and when Dark wizards choose to resurface is one of them. He needs me now, not seven weeks from now."

"You know how important this birthday is, Draco."

"And you know how important catching scum like Avery is. The man has evaded me for almost seventeen years; I'm not letting him get away again." Scorpius had never heard his father speak with such a tone before, and it frightened him.

"Draco, you're talking like this is personal—"

"It _is_ personal," his father interrupted forcefully. "He was my house-mate, Astoria, he sat next to me time and again, he murdered our classmates during the battle and took _glee_ in it, it _is_ personal."

"Draco—"

"What would you have me do? No one knows Avery like I do. No one else has a better chance of capturing him once and for all. Do you want me to go to Potter and tell him that I can't assist in the capture of one of the last at large members of the Old War threat because my son's birthday is in two months?"

His mother was silent after that question, and Scorpius found himself chewing on his lip as he waited anxiously to hear what would be said next. It was his father who spoke again.

"It will not take me long," he said in a gentler voice. "Four weeks at the most. I will be back before his birthday."

"And if you're not?" she challenged then. "What am I to tell Ridgetons? If this takes longer than you plan? You're his _father_, you're to stand behind him at the ceremony, to show your support, to acknowledge that he is equal to the responsibility."

"You need not inform me how important my presence at the ceremony is," was all Scorpius's father said. "I will be there. I will be back before March is out." Scorpius heard the sound of kissing, then his father said, "I love you, Astoria."

"And I, you," his mother responded, though she sounded sad. There was the sound of another kiss, and Scorpius crept back up the stairs, not wanting to be caught listening. The next morning, his father was gone. His mother told him it would be a longer trip than usual. "But he'll be back by the end of March," she'd said with a smile.

But he wasn't. March ended and April began, and there was no sign or word of his father. As Scorpius's birthday came steadily nearer, Scorpius watched his mother become more and more anxious and worried. She wrote more letters, Flooed more people, and made more trips to London in her best clothes than Scorpius could ever remember.

He also caught her crying in her room late at night two different times, but he didn't like to think about that, as the memory made him feel sick to his stomach.

He worried because he knew his mother was worried. But he was only vaguely aware that there was something about the gravity of the situation that was outside his understanding.

Three nights before his birthday, he sat on the steps outside the sitting room long after he was supposed to be asleep, and eavesdropped on his mother making two Floo calls. The first was to the Ridgetons.

"Hello," she said in a cheery voice that Scorpius was almost sure was fake. "Sorry to bother you so late at night, but I wanted to let you know that Draco has come down with a sudden and pretty serious case of Dragon Pox." Mr. Ridgeton said something then that Scorpius couldn't hear, but sounded sympathetic. "Yes, I know," his mother responded. "Merlin only knows where he picked it up. It's just gotten worse as the day's gone on, and we're hoping he'll be all right by the 21st, but . . ."

Scorpius strained to hear Mr. Ridgeton's response, creeping further down the stairs. He caught the end of the sentence. " . . . really, it's no problem, Astoria. You let us know if we need to postpone, and tell Draco to feel better."

His mother's next call was to Mrs. Granger-Weasley, and that was the one that made Scorpius's stomach tie in knots. They spoke in hushed, anxious whispers, and Scorpius could only hear a few, broken phrases that made no sense: "fully immerse" . . . "made his cover" . . . "agent gone dark."

With a growl of frustration, Scorpius tiptoed quietly but quickly up the stairs and scurried for the second floor parlor. It shared a heating grate with the sitting room, and lying on his stomach behind the settee, his ear against the grate, he could hear much clearer.

". . . don't know if he doesn't know more or just can't tell me more. He did say Harry planned on sending in a second agent if they haven't heard anything by the end of the week. But if Draco _has_ gone dark, it's for a reason, and sending a second agent might just make things worse. It's a gamble either way. I'm sorry I can't be more help."

Scorpius retreated to his bedroom after that because if he stayed much longer or heard much more it would become too hard to keep pretending that his dad had an ordinary job and went on ordinary business trips and that this was somehow an ordinary delay.

Two nights later, the night before his birthday, Scorpius woke to the faint _crack_ of Apparition coming from somewhere outside. In a flash, he was out of bed and down to the back second floor landing, which had the window with the best view of their Apparition point. He could see a cloaked figure moving heavily toward the house. Even as he watched, his mother, who had heard the _crack_ as well, flung open the front door and ran to the figure.

Scorpius took advantage of his mother's absence to run to the second floor parlor and position himself with his ear to the grate. Moments later, his parents entered the sitting room. Scorpius's father looked gaunt and exhausted, and Mother had to help him to the fainting couch by the fire. Scorpius's father sagged into the velvet with nothing like his usual uprightness.

"Where have you been?" his mother asked in a whisper little more than a hiss. Draco Malfoy gave a wan smile.

"I told you I'd be back for Scorpius's birthday."

"You said you'd be back in four weeks; it's been seven and a half!" Scorpius had never heard his mother sound so angry.

"I told you I would be gone as long as it took," his father said calmly, and Scorpius watched his mother turn away sharply. "The added length was unfortunate but unavoidable. I feared my cover had been made. I had to go to ground. I couldn't risk making contact; I didn't know who was watching or what they'd seen."

"I don't care," his mother said viciously. "I don't care about Avery, I don't care about your mission, and I don't care about your cover. Your son's birthday is _tomorrow—_"

"And I'm home. You cannot be angry with me for something that didn't happen."

"And you can't claim credit for luck and coincidence!" his mother shot back. "Which are the only responsible factors for your return in the nick of time! I _lied_ to the Ridgetons, Draco! That's what you've made me!"

It made Scorpius feel very small and frightened to hear his parents arguing in such a way. But his father didn't seem cowed or upset at all; rather, he got stiffly but solidly to his feet and approached his wife, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. She shrugged sharply away from it.

"Come now," he said in a soft voice, so soft Scorpius almost couldn't catch it. "Let's have this out, Astoria. This isn't about the birthday. Say what you wish to say."

For a moment, Scorpius thought his mother would refuse. But then, her face crumpled. "I was scared to _death_," she said in a whisper. "What if I'd lost you?" Scorpius's father took her into his arms then, holding her tight, and Scorpius felt the knot in his stomach loosen a bit.

His father murmured something that Scorpius couldn't hear, but when his mother replied, "He's in bed, asleep," he figured he ought to get back to bed, and fast.

He got the door shut just before he heard his father start to make his way up the stairs, moving slower than usual. Scorpius made sure his back was to the door and his eyes were shut tight. Moments later, a sliver of light spilled into the room as the door was opened just the tiniest bit. Scorpius couldn't see his father, or hear him, but he knew he was there. He wondered, for a moment, if his father would come in to wake him, to let him know that he was home in time for his birthday.

But instead his father just stood in the doorway for several long moments, then shut the door carefully behind him. And the next morning, when Scorpius came down for breakfast, his father was at the table, reading the paper as if he'd never been away. He wished his son a happy birthday, and Scorpius said "Thank you, Father," in his most respectful voice. No remark was made on his father's extended absence, and life returned to normal in the Malfoy household, as if it had never happened.

Except that Scorpius knew it had. He didn't know what it meant, and he didn't understand why it was important, and he wouldn't for many years to come. But the events surrounding the weeks before his eleventh birthday opened his eyes to the fact that his father was a lot more than Scorpius had ever been told, a complicated puzzle that Scorpius would spend the next ten years trying to solve.

* * *

As is well established in my Pieces Universe stories (if you know where to look), my Draco Malfoy is a spy. After helping to clear his name, Harry kinda guilted him into becoming an undercover agent for the Auror Department. His code name is White Ferret (courtesy of Ron), only a handful of people are aware of the work that he does. The rest of the world sees him as a coward for his part in the war. This is the Draco and Astoria from "And the World Turns 'Round," and it is the Scorpius from the Roses Trilogy, hence the mention of Honoria and the Bonding.

I'm a bit sorry that Scorpius's moment turned out to focus so heavily on Draco, but only a bit, as a) Scorpius has an entire trilogy and upwards of 85,000 words devoted to him and his life at school and after and his romantic entanglements; b) I find Draco to be fascinating; and c) Draco is, in this universe, Scorpius's defining factor. Wanting to make his father proud of him defines Scorpius his entire time at Hogwarts. He goes into the Auror program because of how the world has responded to his father his whole life.

In painting this relationship, then, I really wanted to drive home the fact that Draco was not a bad father. He was just a distance and detached one. But he wasn't one of these horribly strict, Captain-Von-Trapp-pre-fun-loving-governess type of fathers. He wanted his son to be a child, and he loves Scorpius very much. Too much, from his perspective. I think if Draco had been a stricter father, then Scorpius's relationship with him would have been much more straightforward. But because Draco is this mysterious sort of figure, it becomes much more complicated, and Scorpius does spend the next ten years trying to figure it out.


End file.
